Research On Legal Problems Of Intellectual Property Protection Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is one of the treasure of Chinese culture. It has an unique theoretical system. It has been making an excellent contribution on human being’s health and has received increasingly widespread concern by the international community. TCM contains a huge commercial value, occupies an important position in the traditional medicine market. However, our TCM has not been well protected, due to our indifference on property protection of TCM and the defective development of legal system. Therefore, the competitive advantage of TCM is not reflected, the phenomenon of violations occur frequently, and the intangible assets of TCM drain away. In order to enhance the traditional Chinese medicine intellectual property protection awareness on TCM and provide ideas for the improvement of TCM intellectual property protection system, this thesis basis on the existing research achievements, the characteristics of TCM and the currently development status of TCM, existing intellectual property system in China, analyzes and discusses on the scope of the protection of TCM, the way of protection and the protection defects of existing system from the perspective of jurisprudence. Moreover, this thesis focus on patent protection, trademark protection, trade secret protection and copyright protection to study the system of intellectual property protection of TCM.This thesis is divided into five parts except introduction and conclusion.Chapter1makes a brief introduction on the concept of TCM and thus define the object of research. Meanwhile, this chapter describes the basic characteristics and the development status of TCM, lays a ground work for the later exposition.Chapter2discusses the theoretical basis of discussion of intellectual property protection of TCM. Mastering the concept and characteristics of intellectual property is helpful for understanding the nature and effect of intellectual property system. What’s more, this chapter clarifies the scope of intellectual property protection of TCM and thus may provide a greater range of comprehensive protection for TCM. At last, this chapter shows the significance of intellectual property protection of TCM and illustrates the importance of intellectual property protection of TCM. Chapter3describes an overview of the legally intellectual property protection of TCM. the main way of protection, as well as the problems of intellectual property protection of TCM.Chapter4deeply analyzes the four ways of intellectual property protection of TCM, compares the advantages and disadvantages of each mode of protection.Chapter5explores how to improve TCM in the protection of intellectual property system presents my views and advices on this problem, and identifies different forms of intellectual property rights in this stage should be viewed as an organic whole. We should focus on the integrated use of a variety of intellectual property protection mode and establish database system of TCM in order to provide ideas on intellectual property protection system of TCM.